Pete Hegseth: What Do We Know About the New Likely US Defence Secretary

US Defence Department has three million employees and a $849 billion budget

Wed Jan 15 2025
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Key points

  • Hegseth served as an army major
  • A Fox News contributor and a television personality
  • Has a Master of Public Policy from Harvard

ISLAMABAD: Republican Sen Joni Ernst of Iowa announced on Tuesday that she will support Pete Hegseth after Donald Trump’s pick for defence secretary faced earlier questioning from senators. Ernst’s support means Hegseth’s nomination is expected to have enough votes to advance to the Senate floor and greatly increases the likelihood he will be confirmed, according to CNN.

During his confirmation hearing, Hegseth, faced four hours of questions from Democratic senators – including on women in the military and a sexual assault allegation from 2017. Hegseth has denied all allegations, CBS Evening News reported. Hegseth faced questions about his ability to run the defence department, including its three million employees and $849bn (£695bn) budget, the BBC reported.

With his confirmation likely, here is what we know about the new likely US defence secretary.

“Feckless and foolish”

According to AP, Hegseth complains in his latest book that “woke” generals and the leaders of the elite service academies have left the military dangerously weak and “effeminate” by promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. He says rank and file soldiers are undermined by “feckless civilian leaders and foolish brass,” adding that “the next commander in chief will need to clean house.”

He mocks transgender servicemembers and says the military is turning off recruits.

“Betrayal of the men”

“America’s white sons and daughters are walking away, and who can blame them,” he writes in “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”

Like Trump, he espouses a traditional view of masculinity, writing that men are innately drawn to fight, compete and prove their strength, according to AP.

Hegseth’s writing is contemptuous of the policies, laws and treaties that constrain warfighters on the battlefield, from restrictive rules of engagement to the Geneva Conventions, which he suggests are outdated against enemies who do not abide by them.

“Who cares!”

He has little patience for the moral questions surrounding war. Of the Americans who dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end World War II, he writes, “They won. Who cares.”

He calls to rename Defense Department back to its original moniker, the War Department, and implement a 10-year ban on generals working for defense contractors after retiring from the military.

Hegseth has served in the military, although he lacks senior military or national security experience.

Education and military service

After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantanamo Bay. He was formerly head of the Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and also unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012. According to his Fox News bio, he has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

“Unfit to serve”

Many of the generals who worked in Trump’s first administration — both on active duty and retired — have slammed him as unfit to serve in the Oval Office.

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